Russia at war 1941-1945

Group Centre. According to Guderian, who attended it, Hitler designated the industrial area of Leningrad as his primary objective. He had not yet decided whether Moscow or the Ukraine would come next, but seemed to incline towards the latter target... He hoped to be in possession of Moscow and Kharkov by the time winter began. But no decisions were reached on this day.

[Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader (London, 1952), pp. 189-90.]

For the next twenty days heavy, but still inconclusive fighting continued in the Smolensk area, and when Hitler held another conference on August 23, Guderian's pleading in

favour of a concentrated drive on Moscow was turned down. Hitler had finally made up his mind to attack the Ukraine and the Crimea, saying that the raw materials and the agriculture of the Ukraine were vitally important to the prosecution of the war. As for the Crimea, it was "a Soviet aircraft carrier for attacking the Rumanian oilfields", and must therefore be eliminated. "My generals," he said, "know nothing about the economic aspects of war." Whether or not Hitler still thought that, under this new plan, Moscow could fall before the winter, it was clear to Guderian that this was now most unlikely, and he took Hitler's decision very badly—or at least so he said after the war. He was later to refer to Hitler's decision to move two armies and one tank group to the south, instead of concentrating the attack on Moscow, as a "fatal error".

*

Though the Russians dismiss as fantastic the German claim to have captured 348,000

prisoners, over 3,000 tanks and over 3,000 guns in the Smolensk fighting, Russian losses were undoubtedly heavy. They themselves admit the loss of 32,000 men "missing", 685

tanks and 1,176 guns.

[IVOVSS, vol. 2, p. 77.]

Nevertheless the Smolensk battle was one of the turning points of the war. The Russians had halted the German blitzkrieg, and had forced Hitler to change his plans. Furthermore, it had an important effect on morale within the Red Army. Whereas, initially, many

Russian soldiers had been, as it were, psychologically overwhelmed by the power of the German army, and particularly by the number of their tanks, by the end of July more and more Russian soldiers had learnt to use weapons such as grenades and "Molotov

cocktails" against tanks, and (perhaps because of pep-talks by the Army's propaganda services) a healthy hatred of the Germans more and more took the place of sheer fear. An important aid to morale was a lavish distribution of medals and decorations, though not as lavish as it became later. About a thousand decorations were awarded after Smolensk and seven men were given the title "Hero of the Soviet Union".

Chapter V CLOSE-UP ONE: MOSCOW AT THE BEGINNING

OF THE WAR

I arrived in Russia on July 3, 1941, that is, twelve days after the beginning of the German invasion. Geographically, the journey from London to Moscow was of a kind that was

only conceivable in wartime: travelling with the second batch of the British Military Mission, I was flown to Inverness, then to the Shetlands, and from there, by Catalina flying boat—all in one sixteen-hour hop—to Archangel. The last few hours we flew over the vast uninhabited tundra country of the Kola Peninsula. Then, after flying over the White Sea and Archangel harbour, we came down on the waters of the Dvina river, some miles south of Archangel. Here, on board a sort of large house-boat, a sumptuous supper had been laid on by the local military authorities, and this supper continued, right through the "white" night till two or three in the morning. Among the members of this second batch of the Military Mission—the first batch, with General Mason MacFarlane at its

head, had flown to Moscow a few days before—were two Home Office officials in

colonel's uniform, one a fire-fighting expert, who was taking a stirrup pump to Moscow, and the other a shelter expert.

Our hosts were a colonel and two majors, both extremely amiable, and, as the evening progressed, other officers joined the party. Several referred to Stalin's broadcast that day, and thought it would be a very long and hard war, but that Russia would win it in the end.

One of the majors assured me that Moscow's air defences wese such that it would

probably never be bombed, and that the same was true of Leningrad.

All of them were eagerly interested in Britain with which Russia had, obviously, had very little contact for a long time. The curious thing was that both the colonel and the two majors showed a very special interest in Rudolf Hess and seemed, in fact, rather worried about him. They had read Churchill's speech and said that the Russian people had been very gratified by it, though they knew that Churchill had been one of the chief